This blog was written as part of the “Bless 30 People Generously” 30th Anniversary Challenge Group.
Growing up, my dad would tell us: “Kids, you can’t outgive God!” It is easy to mindlessly parrot this truth as a child until one day bills start coming in, taxes are taken out of your paycheck, and you realize how much more you could pocket if you kept it all for yourself. The challenging financial realities of life can prompt us to ask: Does the biblical teaching on generosity actually hold up in the “real world?”
The Apostle Paul seeks to give an honest answer to this honest question in his second letter to the Corinthians. Paul had it in his heart to generously bless the believers who were extremely poor in Jerusalem. As a way of showing special honor and establishing deeper bonds of fellowship between these two ethnically diverse churches, Paul decides to take up a special offering.
But here is the thing… The Christians at Corinth didn’t have a whole lot of resources either. Like many of us, they were prone to live from what one writer calls “the Myth of Scarcity.” The myth of scarcity is the story we tell ourselves that there just isn’t enough for me and for you. We tell ourselves that the world we live in is an either/or world — EITHER I look out for “me and mine,” OR I help provide for your needs and suffer lack in the process.
But look at how Paul flips the script, taking them out of the myth of scarcity and placing them into the truer and better story of God’s abundance:
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work… Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Corinthians 9:6-11 NIV
Paul wants to remind us that God’s world is the “real world.” And God’s radical display of generosity in Jesus denies the powerful myth of scarcity that causes us to clutch our purses so closely (see 2 Corinthians 8:9). God’s good creation is not built upon the logic of an either/or, but on the promise of an abundant AND — “and my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:9 NIV). God’s generosity is the ground of what Dr. Anderson calls grace-onmics: the leveraging of our financial and relational networks to help others succeed in their economic worlds.
My friends, we truly can’t outgive God! He gave everything on the cross so that we might share in his abundant, resurrection life; a life that even death — the ultimate loss — cannot diminish or divest. My hope and prayer is that as we seek to grow mature and mighty in generosity, you would witness firsthand the abundant AND of God’s gracious economy. Following in his footsteps, let us “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2 NIV).
Yours in Christ,
Will Eastham